Trial Garden

Heuchera

Summary

Heuchera, also known as coral bells or alumroot, are a favorite of gardeners everywhere. Their popularity is proven by the huge array of cultivars available today. The incredible amount of excitement surrounding Heuchera has led to an excessive amount of choices as well as the occasional release of inferior or redundant plants before adequate trialing. For these reasons, Mt. Cuba Center set out to evaluate 83 different cultivars derived from two species native to the eastern United States. Those species, H. americana and H. villosa, have lent hardiness, vigor, and important color components to modern hybrids. After three years of evaluating plant habit, vigor, bloom time, flower color, sun tolerance, pest and disease resistance, and overall adaptability, ten cultivars stood out as top performers. These prominent performers are ‘Citronelle’, ‘Bronze Wave’, ‘Cajun Fire’, ‘Color Dream’, ‘Steel City’, ‘Caramel’, ‘Apple Crisp’, ‘Frosted Violet’, ‘Southern Comfort’, and ‘Spellbound’.

Below are detailed descriptions about the performance of each plant in the evaluation as well as a link to the Report that summarizes the important horticultural information about Heuchera.

Heuchera ‘Southern Comfort’

Heuchera ‘Spellbound’

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About Our
Evaluation
Project

Mt. Cuba Center is located near Wilmington, DE, (USDA Hardiness Zone7A/6B). Multiple plants of each taxa are grown in a 15,000 sq. ft. trial garden that includes areas for growing both sun-loving and shade-loving plants. The clay-loam soil in the trial garden has an average pH of 6.5.

The Trial Garden is maintained with the home gardener in mind. Plants are watered as needed during the first year in order to get them established, but afterwards they are left on their own. Pesticides are not used unless there is a serious threat to the entire trial’s survivability.

Perennial plant trials usually run for a period of three years to ensure the plants experience a variety of weather conditions. It is our policy to replace dead plants after the first winter in order to compensate for poor establishment or initial plant quality. However, no replacements are made during subsequent years. Each taxa is evaluated weekly and assigned a rating based on a scale of 1-5 (see below). This rating takes into account many factors including habit, floral display, disease resistance, hardiness, and foliage quality. The average of theses weekly ratings is then used to calculate the final score displayed on this website.

Rating
System

Our numerical rating system ranges from one to five and can be interpreted as follows: